On these days the emotional and sensational news throughout the world’s communication media, is the scandal in the Catholic Church concerning the child abuses by her clergy. The attack by the media and journalists aim to portray Pope Benedict and the Catholic Church, which he leads as “the epicentre of sexual abuse of the young”. In this small article I want to explain to the readers what is happening in the world today, how the Pope and the Church are blamed and ridiculed and what they are doing in the present world. Those who are ignorant of what is happening in the world today – especially ever since the sex revolution ushered into our human society in the later years of the second Millennium, might think that the Pope, the head of the Catholic Church, and the celibate Bishops and priests closest to him are culprits of all sex scandals in the world specially those of paedophilia.

“The sexual and physical abuse of children and young people is a global plague; its manifestations run the gamut from fondling by teachers to rape by uncles!” (George Weigel, First Things Magazine, March 29th 2010). The sexual revolution that has pervaded into all areas of human society has perverted and degraded human dignity by destroying all forms of ethical and moral values of life. All that people considered morally good until recently is no more good! Until recently it was morally good for a young boy or a girl to be chaste or a virgin, now it is considered as abnormal and unhealthy. Until recently it was a moral mandate for married couples to remain faithful to each other in their marriage bond, now it is considered as infringement of one’s personal freedom. Until recently abortion was considered child- murder, now it is approved and legalized everywhere, as normality. Until recently homosexuality and lesbianism were considered to be perversions but today they are the normal people in our society! Until very recently old and sick people were given respect, sympathy, love and care, but now the society wants to get rid of them through euthanasia. It was normal that children would be born after the wedding of the couples, but now the majority of the children, especially in Western countries are born out of wedlock! The number of men and women living together in a sexual relationship without any form of marriage, either civil or ecclesiastical, is increasing; also the number of lesbian and homosexual unions. Masturbation, premarital sex, fornication, adultery, free sex, concubinage, prostitution, divorce, abortion, homosexuality, euthanasia, pornography, sex and erotic shops, hotels and brothels for child abuse, etc. have become normal and acceptable in today’s “modern and permissive” society.

According to the World Health Organization forty two million abortions are officially reported every year! Abortions are mainly the results of licentious and immoral lives. The divorce rate in Western countries is almost 70%. For the last 5 years more than half of the children born in Western countries are of unmarried mothers. The pornographic industry earns 2.500 Euro per second in Europe. At every second, 28.000 regular users visit pornographic websites. Every year the pornographic industry earns more than 75 billion Euro. The sexual abuse of children, “paedophilia” is the “normal” consequence of a morally sick and permissive society, such as the one we live in today, in which “sex” itself –as a mere instrument of lust and pleasure – is highly prioritized by governmental and private institutions. According to the first UN general’s study on violence against children (2006), 150 million girls and 75 million boys under 18 years are being forced to sexual intercourse and sexual abuse every year and, most of them by their parents, relatives and educators. Approximately 10-15% of all European children are victims of child abuse. 1.8 million children are forced to prostitution and pornography, and 1.2 million children are sold as slaves for child labour including victims of sex tourism, which is specially popular in Europe. The rate of paedophilia by homosexuals is more than that of anyone else in the society.

The Catholic Church is the only institution, the Holy Father the Pope as her head and the Bishops and priests as her messengers, that fights constantly tooth and nail without any compromise against the moral ignominy, depravation and degradation in the human society. It is certain that the demon of immorality that perverts the human society tries to pour filth on the Pope and the Church to malign and to defame them; and thus to eliminate the voice of the Pope and the Church, which is in reality the Master’s voice. The spirit of the antichrist, the spirit that destroys the works of Christ in the world is at work. The present Pope, Benedict XVI, again and again along with his predecessors has warned about the dangers of the spirit of modernism, secularism and relativism. An antichristian vision of the world is growing day by day! This vision believes that human life is not sacred, hence there is no need to defend life in the mother’s womb; marriage is not simply and intrinsically between man and woman, so same sex union must be accepted as normal; sex and sexuality are the needs of every man and there should be freedom to use them as one likes; religion should not dictate rules and regulations to the consciences of men and women, etc. In order to achieve these and other goals, the strong voice of Jesus that is uttered by the church through the Pope and the clergy must be stopped! Everyone knows that Europe is removing all Christian roots and culture! Hence the present attack on the Church and the Pope is the cunningly planned and frenzied campaign of Satan to smear the name of the Pope and the Church in the world today. There are even telephone calls to the Vatican from Austria, Germany, England and Ireland asking for the Pope to resign. Some even dared to call for his arrest! Let not Satan and all those who are polluted by his tactics think that they can intimidate and silence the Pope and the Church. Till the end of the times, the Pope and the Church will fight against the spirit of antichrist and the spirit of immorality, and the final victory will be that of the Church.

Being authentic to her master’s voice, the Church, through her Popes, Bishops and priests advocates, propagates and promotes holiness of life, especially with regard to sexual purity basing the teachings on sound moral and ethical values coming from natural and divine laws. Always and everywhere the Church boldly and loudly speaks: “God’s will for mankind is holiness of life, therefore all must refrain from all forms of immorality” (I Thess 4: 3). The spirit that the Church breathes on those who believe in Christ Jesus is a spirit of holiness and purity, and therefore the Christians are called more specifically to holiness of life (I Thess 4: 7-8). In this context it is very understandable why the spirit of impurity and unholiness is waging a war like a roaring lion against the Church and the Vicar of Christ. It is time for the Church to discern and to know the spirits of impurity and antichrist that plague humanity and to be equipped to fight against them with courage and boldness.

It is true that the spirit of impurity infiltrated into the lives of a few clerics in the Catholic Church and now they are the prey of the journalists and media. The recent Popes were well aware of it, and without hiding anything tried their best to correct them, and even to the extent of rebuking and punishing them. The present Pope Benedict XVI is always in front to proclaim the need of a culture free from sexual abuses. Even before his ascend to Papacy, he was determined to cleanse the Church of “filth” (Ratzinger’s speech at Subiaco on 1st. April 2005). Pope Benedict has sought more energetically and efficiently to cleanse the Church of various corrupt tendencies and practices that crept into the Church. In the last 50 years priests were accused of 3000 cases of reported child abuse, although not all were found guilty of conviction. According Charles J. Scicluna – someone like the attorney general of the Vatican responsible for crimes – says that out of these 3.000 cases, 60% are ephebophilia, 30% are heterosexual relations and only 10% are truly paedophilic cases; it means only 300 cases of the total of 500.000 priests in the world which makes only 0.06%. According to Prof. Philippe Jenkins (Paedophilia and priests, anatomy of a contemporary crisis – Oxford University Press) the paedophilia problem in the Catholic clergy is lower than in other denominations of Christianity and other religions in the world. For example according to a report published by Luigi Accatoli, from the 210.000 registered cases of sexual abuses in Germany since 1995, only 94 correspond to people or institutions of the Catholic Church. In Austria, out of 510 cases only 17 refer to catholic clergy. By exaggeration and lies an artificial “moral panic” is created specially in the West on paedophilia of the Catholic clergy. The politicians and the press are trying to take the Church back to medieval Europe, to the times of the French revolution, in order to swift and to destroy her. According to Jenkins – the power of the continuing paedophile propaganda issue is one of the means of propaganda and harassment used by politicians in their attempt to break the power of the German Catholic Church especially in the fields of education and social services.

Most of the cases of paedophilia of the clergy are of the 60’s! It was the time some Catholic Universities in USA and Europe developed a misconceived teaching about human sexuality and moral theology. Perhaps some of the seminarians of that time were impressed by this and acted in an undignified way. Pope John Paul II strongly confronted such corruption, cancelling the permission to some teachers in the Seminaries and universities. We must know that today’s priests and ministers of the Church are recruited from some of the broken families, sometimes even from families that have immoral backgrounds. It is not necessary that the long and tedious period of training completely deleted all their spiritual and moral defects from their personalities, although it is what is meant by the superiors who trained them in the Holy Scriptures and teachings of the Church, saturated with prayers, meditations and sacramental life. Paedophilia is the psychological defect of a personality; it is a sexual interest in children below the age of puberty. Psycho analysis recognizes the child abuser as typically immature man who wants to ‘give love’ to a boy which he did not receive in childhood. He makes a narcissistic identification with the child seeing him as an idealised version of himself, and perceives himself as giving the same love which he wished he had received from his own father. The paedophile can not understand that he is inflicting emotional damage to the person concerned but from his subconscious mind he thinks that he is doing something good. (Problem of paedophilia Nov 5. 1998 in Narth).

Hence there is no wonder if a small minority of the Catholic clergy are having bad tendencies towards homosexuality, paedophilia or other immoral behaviours, although they are to be deplored, renounced and removed. Pope Benedict acted without any tolerance or compromise against all that tarnished the honour and dignity of the priesthood and the integrity of the victims of the child abuse. He took rapid action when the issue of paedophilia errupted in some dioceses of USA and Ireland. In one of his letters to the Church in Ireland, the Pope called, “traitors” those guilty of abuse and announced a rigorous inspections in dioceses, seminaries and religious organizations. When he was the Prefect of the Congregation for the doctrine of Faith, he included such abuses in the list of grave sins and he exhorted the Bishops to refer such cases to Vatican.

Here we should know the meaning of the Church. The Church is both human and divine. The Church is founded by Jesus Christ, the holy and only begotten Son of God, on the foundation of the apostles who walked along with Him. Through the reception of various sacraments, the Holy Spirit keeps the members of the Church as the fellow citizens with the holy ones (Eph 2: 19-22). But at the same time the members of the Church are living here on earth, they are out of flesh and blood with all their human frailties and weaknesses; and they are trying to be holy with the grace received in the sacraments and liturgical prayers.  The members of the Church are destined to be holy but are now struggling on earth fighting against Satan, the flesh and the world and becoming holy. So, the church on earth is not the fellowship of saints but it is the fellowship of those called to be saints and are becoming saints! We must know that priests and ministers of the Church are also part and parcel of this Church – the household of God.

What about the 99.94% of the Catholic priests who are not accused of any sexual scandal? They stand witness to the holiness of the Catholic Church through their practice of celibacy, and the journalists or the world media have nothing to say about them. The holiness of catholic priests centred around the practice of celibacy is the axle and epicentre for all mankind to receive power and grace to live a morally good life; and it is the power of the Catholic Church. There is a story that once a small statue fell down from the dome of a big cathedral and the journalists made photos and reports about it and made sensational news in all newspapers, magazines, TVs, etc. When they read about it with deep sorrow, they failed to know about the 999 good and big statues that were still standing on the same dome! The Catholic priests who live a holy life by the practice of celibacy know the power of it and radiate it on those among whom they work bringing them to holiness of life. I am a Catholic priest for the last 37 years, and have preached the Gospel in 97 countries in all 5 continents; and I have a retreat or a convention of 4 to 5 days every week. In all my works for the Lord and His Church I feel and experience the power of celibacy in my life. All my energies of sex and sexuality are surrendered to the action and unction of the Holy Spirit who sublimes them to supernatural energies to live and work for Jesus and His kingdom. In my last 34 years of preaching ministry, I have never come across with the accusation of anyone being misused or molested by a Catholic priest; but several times I have wept over those cases of children who were sexually misused by their parents or relatives.

It is a pity that the other denominations of Christianity who removed the truth of the Church, which is the foundation and pillar of truth and separated themselves from the Mother Church for their own selfish motives, are now decrying the faults of the Catholic Church with a very unchristian attitude. Already we saw that there are more paedophiles and sex abusers in those churches than in the Catholic Church. And they say that all this is because of the celibacy of the priests in the Catholic Church. The millions and millions of children abused in the world are not abused by catholic priests but by married people and even by their own parents. We must know that many pastors of those churches have divorced their wives, officially they have legalized abortion, divorce and homosexual unions. What is to say! They don’t only have women priests but they have lesbian priests and bishops. It is they who are trying to remove the splinter from the eyes of the Catholic Church unmindful of the beams which are on their own eyes. Today Christ should ask the conscience of those who accuse the Catholic Church, “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her” (Jn 8: 7).

During this time of purification, the Church must be aware of what the Bible speaks, “Be sober and vigilant. Your opponent the devil is prowling around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, steadfast in faith, knowing that your fellow believers throughout the world undergo the same sufferings” (I Pet 5: 8-9). “For our struggle is not with flesh and blood but with the principalities, with the powers, with the world rulers of this present darkness, with the evil spirits in the heavens” (Eph 6: 12). But she did not fear the assaults of the enemy because Jesus the Lord and Head of the Church is there to fight with her. The promise that Jesus had made to the first Pope Peter remains true even to the Pope today, “And I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. I give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosened in heaven” (Mt 16: 18-19). It is the Catholic Church, with the Pope as its head, which Jesus founded and He has given her the keys of the kingdom of God, and the gates of the netherworld will not prevail against it. When the soldiers crucified Jesus, they thought that His story ended, but it was only the beginning of the story.

The timely humiliation to which the Catholic Church has been dragged by the lies and calumniation of the journalists and the world media will end soon, the true Church of Christ, the Catholic Church, will triumph again as the light of the world to shed light and grace to all those who live in the shadow of sin and darkness specially of the sins of immorality, so that human beings created in God’s image and likeness which is holiness and goodness will again shine out in holiness of lives by the teachings of the Bible and the Church.